Take Stock of CRM Optimization Opportunities for Big Impact

With a new year upon us and an economy that is slowly improving, it is time to review your customer centric strategies to ensure that marketing+sales basics and the technology to leverage those basics are in place. While target marketing and sales follow up are key, the CRM optimization advances over the past few years have made it possible to better cultivate your top tier customers and grow their numbers as well as to increase dollar spent per customer.

Recently, for a global fashion and apparel client, we brought together demographic, lifestyle, wealth and other buyer profile data for the top 20 percent of the company’s customers. We noted two clusters within this group – ‘A’ & ‘B’ with ‘A’ customers buying almost twice as much as ‘B’ customers. We also identified several characteristics that helped predict buyer behavior of ‘A’ customers. Using this information, we sent targeted promotions to the top 20 percent ‘B’ customers with a goal to induce purchase behavior closer to ‘A’ customers.  We also reached out to customers in the lower 80 percent that displayed top tier profile characteristics but were not buying at the top tier levels. Finally, we used the top 20 percent buyer profile to target prospects and reduce acquisition costs. The result?  Increased revenues in all three sectors!

No matter the industry, analysis of external customer/market information coupled with internal customer transactional data can be used to create highly predictive propensity-to-purchase models. But it requires a robust CRM system that has integrated marketing and sales modules and real-time workflow tools to move data seamlessly between marketing and sales. It also requires a sales team that is well trained on the importance of accurate tracking and reporting in the CRM system. This closed-loop marketing/sales process is critical for generating key ROI insights that marketing personnel can utilize to evaluate future campaigns/initiatives and that sales can use to close additional business.

At the end of the day, it is a simple equation with big impact: marketing + sales + CRM = big impact. Read more in my February destinationCRM column, “Marketing + Sales + CRM = Big Impact”.